


rest in violence, rise in anger

by blisters



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26708725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blisters/pseuds/blisters
Summary: Allison was the first person to see Jaylen after she came back, throwing pitches to nobody on a foggy morning. She walked toward the bullpen, the dew soaking in, and Jaylen was the same as ever, brown hair thrown to one side, the same length it had been years before when the sun went out and took her with it. Now the sun was coming up and Jaylen was alive and throwing harder than she ever had before. Then she saw Allison and threw a ball at her face.
Relationships: Allison Abbot/Jaylen Hotdogfingers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	rest in violence, rise in anger

**Author's Note:**

> this is out of control but never look back or whatever

Allison was the first person to see Jaylen after she came back, throwing pitches to nobody on a foggy morning. She walked toward the bullpen, the dew soaking in, and Jaylen was the same as ever, brown hair thrown to one side, the same length it had been years before when the sun went out and took her with it. Now the sun was coming up and Jaylen was alive and throwing harder than she ever had before. Then she saw Allison and threw a ball at her face.

“Hello to you too.”

She should have realized then, but she didn’t. She should have realized a week later when when Jaylen hit three players in one game. Instead she quietly approached her after the game and asked her if she was alright. But Jaylen hadn’t spoken since coming back and she said nothing then either, just stared back at Allison, and there was disappointment in her eyes (Allison thought it was disappointment in herself, but it was not), then she walked away. Allison let her be, but then Moody died, and Elijah and Mclaughlin, and Allison was bent under the grief of it, something inside her warping and ready to snap. She had seen death before (she had seen Jaylen’s, and mourned for her, and for the end of what they knew even then was a season of innocence), but so much death at once made her choke. She knew that things were changing again, and found Jaylen sitting alone in the bleachers after the game.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

Jaylen continued to watch the birds.

“Those were the same players you hit the other day. What the fuck did you do to them?”

Still nothing, and Allison began to fray. “God damn you, things are bad enough without us hurting each other.” She grabbed Jaylen by the shoulder and then Jaylen was standing, and finally looking at her as she threw off Allison’s hand and knocked her back against the railing.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Or what, huh?” Allison stepped forward again. “What’ll you do, Hotdogfingers? Nail me as well?”

Jaylen’s smile was a death’s-head. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Allison felt it like a blow to the chest. She lurched foward and found one of her hands around Jaylen’s throat, pressing her backwards against hard plastic. Then she saw the flush up Jaylen’s neck, and her heavy breaths, and suddenly she was alive again, resurrected by Allison’s fury.

Allison pushed off her, feeling sick. She refused to look back as she walked to the locker room.

Her relationship with Kichiro unraveled over the season, yarn peeling slowly from the skein, and it wasn’t until nothing was left that she realized it had been happening at all. One night Allison woke up and turned to find her sitting up in bed, head tilted away, looking at the Seattle night. When she heard Allison moving Kichiro looked over, eyes dry, and said _I love you, but this isn’t working._ She left in the morning, and Allison was in the training room an hour later. It wasn’t until she saw Jaylen walking to the mound that she understood what Kichiro had meant, and why she was alone. She had become wrapped up in Jaylen, the mystery of her violence, and found she had been watching her ever since that first day, when she lurched out of the path of the ball Jaylen threw at her. She was hounded by everything she didn’t understand, and the questions she wasn’t asking, and Boyfriend died, and as he did she saw Tot Clark stagger where he stood, and shudder like an engine winding down before he returned to himself and spat on the ground. Afterwards Allison found him in the locker room, and he gave her a weak smile and apologized for the loss, then turned and left for the showers. Allison was too afraid to call him back, to ask him what had happened to him (if he knew what had happened to him), of what his answer might be. She knew there was something wrong with her, when the imagined death of a teammate cut deeper than the true death she had witnessed hours before, but it finally turned something in her and there was Jaylen and there was her hatred and Allison threw her against the wall and she bounced off like she’d been waiting for this all season and grabbed Allison around the waist and they both went down but it was Allison who came out on top but Jaylen who was laughing and Allison couldn’t think of anything to do but jam a leg between Jaylen’s, and her gasp and that laugh were like a cloudburst, or a fever breaking. Jaylen grabbed her by the collar and kissed her, and Allison bit her lip, and they fumbled with each other’s clothes until Allison found her way to Jaylen’s desire and anger and the fight was over.

Later: “You know this doesn’t change anything.”

“You mean you’re still going to hit batters.”

Jaylen looked at her from the doorway; disappointment again. “You think they’d stop killing us if I did?”

The season ended and her teammates survived, Tot and and Malik, but the following spring Allison realized that Jaylen was right. She was still a headhunter, and there was still death, but no longer did it seem that one necessarily followed the other. And in this way the spell was lifted, the illusion that we were to blame for our own suffering, because we could see and name and point to each other, and ignore the shape of the world and who exists around its turnings. Which did not mean that our anger was diminished, only that it began to find its truer source.

For the most part. Because then Jaylen hit Paula just above the knee, and Allison watched her limp off the field, and the next day she jogged over to the other dugout to ask about her leg, and touched her shoulder, and suddenly it felt like she took a blow to the head, and came to wearing a different team’s jersey.

* * *

So it’s hard not to be angry with Jaylen for the loss of her team and her city. Especially when, her first time batting against her, she sees Jaylen’s smile and knows what’s coming, and where they stand with each other. The ball strikes her in the shoulder, she throws down her helmet and charges the mound, and Jaylen’s face is exultation.


End file.
